Shepherds Friendly has signed a new partnership agreement with insurance and healthcare specialist Alula Technologies.
The technology firm is now providing the Manchester-based mutual with a low-code underwriting platform, which has been designed so that it can be adapted quickly and easily to changing market conditions and consumer needs.
A key goal of the bespoke integration is to empower Shepherds Friendly to reach a wider audience, with the enhancements to the way it underwrites aimed at allowing the friendly society to provide cover to more people.
In the future, Shepherds Friendly plans to integrate more of the pre-configured capabilities that exist within the platform, including AI decisioning and document fraud analysis. In addition, it hopes to leverage the platform’s ability to ingest external data sources in the underwriting processes, which could enable increased real-time decisions and insights to improve the customer experience.
Daniel Simpson, Chief Innovation Officer at Shepherds Friendly, said:
“As a mutual, a core part of our ethos is to strengthen financial resilience, and we believe adapting underwriting models in line with societal change and shifting market conditions is vital to increasing the uptake of products such as income protection. Our own research shows that only 14% of Brits currently have income protection; this is something we’re committed to improving.
“This new platform significantly enhances our ability to adapt our processes at speed. By automating our underwriting, we can deliver faster, more consistent decisions and improve the overall digital experience for our members. In the future, it will also allow us to ingest external data sources into our underwriting processes, helping us to future-proof our operations and continue innovating.”
Patrick Ashton, Solutions Director at Alula Technologies, said: “The first phase of our work with Shepherds Friendly was aimed at meeting its current needs, but also at enabling it to adapt to the changing consumer landscape in future.
“We look forward to continuing to work together as the business grows further and hope our platform plays a role in ensuring the society’s long-term success.”
